The present disclosure relates to an aircraft component assembly and more particularly to an aircraft component assembly having a thermal management de/anti-icing system.
Aircraft components such as nacelles have leading edges that may have a tendency toward ice build-up during adverse weather conditions. This icebuild-up may increase the weight of components, increase aerodynamic drag and alter airflow surfaces which can cause performance degradation of (for example) the fan and/or engine in the nacelle region. To address this icing issue, aircraft components may have an anti-ice or de-icing systems. An anti-icing system is intended to heat the surface of the component to a high enough temperature that when water droplets impinge, they either evaporate or they do not freeze and run-off of the component surface. A de-icing system is intended to be activated when ice may or already has formed, and provides enough thermal energy to the surface of the component to detach the ice and allow it to fall off. (We will refer herein to both types of systems simply as “de-icing.”) Many current de-icing systems utilize hot engine bleed air as the heat source which is channeled to the aircraft component such as a nacelle inlet leading edge where it is used to prevent or melt ice formation. Because the bleed air is very hot (for example 700-1,000 degrees Fahrenheit), the nacelle inlet leading edges are typically made of a metal material so that their mechanical properties and performance do not degrade when heated to the temperature of the bleed air.
With recent advancements in material technology, light-weight composite materials are being more readily used in nacelle manufacturing. Unfortunately, such composite materials are not capable of handling the elevated temperatures produced by typical de-icing systems using bleed air. Other thermal de-icing systems have been proposed which utilize electric resistive heating on the backside of the aircraft component to be de-iced instead of bleed air, where the temperature is better controlled by the thermal-electric system to permit the use of lightweight composite materials. But these types of systems have their own drawbacks, including cost and complexity. For this and other reasons, there is a need to improve de-icing systems to enable, for example, greater flexibility in the use of composite materials.